After a violent death by an unknown force and a timely reanimation by the human supremacist organization Cerberus, Commander Shepard must assemble a new squad in the seedier side of the galaxy for a suicide mission in the second installment of the "Mass Effect" trilogy.

Shadow Broker -- At what point in ME2 should I play it?

I'm currently doing a run-through of ME1+2 in preparation for 3 and I'm a little unsure of when in the game I should play it.

Obviously, it was released after everyone completed the suicide mission, so second to last (before Arrival) would be an option. However, from the hints and bits of info I've learned about LotSB, you get resources and some kind of "investment" options that would be useful in the middle of the game.

I was thinking of doing it after Horizon, but before the Reaper IFF--a good chunk of the game done, but not as a loose end after the plot resolves.

It's a relatively difficult mission, so if you're on insanity you'll want your Collector Base weapon and some upgraded powers. Definitely don't do it after the Reaper IFF if you want a perfect run (I don't know if you've played the game before, but you can pretty much only do one or two missions after the IFF without some imperfect stuff happening). I don't know if the "Investment" stuff does much, but you do get locations of specific mineral-rich planets that make mining and probing pretty easy.

I'd say do it after Collector Base, before IFF. That's how I'm doing it in my pre-ME3 run.

I'm gunna go ahead and go against what was said here and say do it ASAP. There's a bunch of investments that can help early on that will make make minerals/cash less tedius.

But really, it doesn't much matter. Do it if you start to get bored or something (I always get a bit bored when I'm doing all the loyalty quests, that gets repetitive, at least after the first play through)

After collector ship, before IFF seems to be a good time to do it, as previously mentioned. You get the opportunity to make a bit of cash, but if you have an imported char/ completed the game previously, money should not be critical.

You do get some random weapon upgrades, not sure if it's one per playthrough. (Got sniper dmg as infiltrator, only checked back once)

You can do it before or after, I have done both, but I suggest doing it after the game when you don't have much else to think about other than doing that mission. The only thing that really changes is the conversation you have with Liara if you ask her to aboard the ship.

Kasumi should be tackled ASAP, so as to unlock yourself a fantastic new SMG, and of course Kasumi herself who's a great party member(EDIT: or yeah, basically what @Red said :P) . Overlord is completely independent story-wise, so it fits in whenever. There's no new weapons or squad-mates either, so there's no rush.

@Abyssfull: @Red: Thanks guys. I'm playing Vanguard so a new SMG would be great. I just did the Horizon mission, so I got Kasumi downloading now. I think I may skip Overlord for now, just for the sake of saving time to finish for ME3.